As the world learned that a teenage gunman killed at least 19 kids and two adults, including a teacher, at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday, loved ones of students who hadn’t yet been accounted for shared desperate pleas to help locate them.
For some parents, the search for answers was excruciating—and seemingly endless. Parents who had not been reunited with their children gave DNA samples to identify the dead and the injured who were unable to identify themselves to hospital staff, Sue Rankin, blood-drive coordinator in Uvalde told CNN.
“As of right now, they haven’t told me anything,” Ryan Ramirez, a foreman for a utility contracting company who was searching for his daughter Alithia, told The Daily Beast after 10 p.m. local time. “They’re calling a bunch of hospitals to see if she’s in a hospital or still in the school.”
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Ramirez said he had last seen his daughter on Tuesday morning, when he dropped her off at Robb Elementary in Uvalde. By early afternoon, he told The Daily Beast, he had learned from the news that a shooting had occurred at the school and that something might be terribly wrong “as soon as I started dialing her teachers’ numbers” and couldn’t reach anyone.
Eventually, he took to Facebook in desperation.
Nikki Jackson was waiting for an update on her nephew, fourth-grader Uziyah Garcia. She told The Daily Beast earlier Tuesday that cops weren’t telling families much; they were forced to read updates on the news. Earlier that day, Jackson posted on Facebook: “We are being told some kids ran from school into the houses in the neighborhood. Please share and if anyone sees him CONTACT ME ASAP.”
“I just don’t understand how we don’t have any information in here, and yet the outside world is saying how many kids are dead, but the police won’t tell us anything,” Jackson said. “We have to see it on the media and the news first. They keep telling us there’s no information, that’s it.” According to Jackson, Uziyah’s teacher was among those shot dead.
Parents mass outside the civic center, hoping to be reunited with their children.
Marco Bello/ReutersJackson said some of the parents left the Uvalde Civic Center, where families were hoping to reunite, to search for the missing children themselves, in case they fled into neighborhood houses to hide.
“I’m just hoping they say my nephew is one of the kids who ran away,” Jackson said through tears.
Uziyah’s grandfather, Manny Renfro, later told the AP the frantic search for his grandson had ended in heartbreak, and the 8-year-old was confirmed to be among the dead.
“The sweetest little boy that I’ve ever known,” he was quoted saying. “I’m not just saying that because he was my grandkid.”
Brandon Elrod told an ABC News affiliate that he was looking for his 10-year-old daughter Makenna, and that because he couldn’t find her at the school, he was asking about funeral homes in the area. “What are you worried about right now?” a reporter asked him. He replied, “She may not be alive.”
“I don’t know what this world's coming to,” Elrod said, choking back tears.
Family friends spread the word on Facebook, too, with one of them writing, “She is the sweetest little girl I have had the pleasure of spending time with. It’s crazy to think something like this can happen this closely to you or someone you know. Please keep this little girl in your prayers.”
Federico Torres told KHOU that he was searching for his 10-year-old son Rogelio, and that officials at the hospital and at the civic center had no answers for him.
On Facebook, Deanna Miller asked for help locating her cousin and shared a photo of the little girl. “My little cousin … is missing please lord hear our prayers and please let these babies just be misplaced and harm free,” she wrote. “If anyone has seen her please contact me.”
Miller told The Daily Beast her son Aaron also attends Robb Elementary but she reunited with him within hours. Now she’s waiting for answers on her little cousin named Miranda. “Please let us know something about the missing children so we can have some type of peace," she told The Daily Beast.
A mother of a little girl pleaded for help on Facebook, too.
“Help me find my baby,” she wrote.
“If anyone hears or sees anything please let me know,” she added in another post. “This picture was taken this morning. Everyone is telling to check places I can’t leave !!!!!”
By the evening, some of the online posts had turned to grief. While the victims’ names weren’t confirmed, some relatives wrote that their loved ones had died.
“This world is so unfair a innocent child taken from us because of some dumb choice I’m so upset. please pray for my family,” one woman wrote.
“Fly high handsome angel. Til we meet again,” she wrote.
The name of one victim, fourth-grade teacher Eva Mireles, was confirmed on Tuesday evening. Mireles was an educator for 17 years, and her aunt, Lydia Martinez Delgado, released a statement on her family’s sickening loss.
“I’m furious that these shootings continue. These children are innocent. Rifles should not be easily available to all. This is my hometown, a small community of less than 20,000. I never imagined this would happen to especially loved ones.... All we can do is pray hard for our country, state, schools, and especially the families of all,” she said.
